INDEPENDENT EXISTENCE

Go back to the thing itself! If one wants to encounter Worringer’s pictures with a consistent theory, as we’re used to doing in the study of art in the German-speaking world, this kind of striving for an objective view is carried on ad absurdum. The works can only be appropriately comprehended if we acknowledge that viewers see and perceive things in different ways. As is the case with intersubjectivity, perception involves a relationship between participants with different points of view. The recognition of knowledge has its origin in each individual. The person engaged in seeing understands his own perspective. As Didi Hubermann’s writes: “What we see looks back at us with our own eyes.” Out of this, however, it’s postulated that one must acknowledge paintings in the capacity of an independent person. As such they bring their own meta-language with them; they are self-reflexive, performative, so to speak. They have their own independent existence.